Ten minutes later they were seated in his snuggery, which was liberally adorned with school and college groups, cross-laced with oars and topped with the head of a water buffalo which had been rash enough to cross the Reverend Eustace’s path on a holiday in South Africa. Sergeant Plumptree sipped at his mug of scalding cocoa and manœuvred his notebook on to his knee so that he could write unobtrusively.
“First of all,” said the priest, “what is it all about?”
There seemed to be no object in suppressing the facts, so Sergeant Plumptree related the essentials of the case to his host and summarised the information that Hazlerigg had asked him to obtain.
“Well,” said the clergyman, “I haven’t seen Smallbone for more than a year. Tell you why in a minute. But if you want to know what sort of man he was, then I can probably give you as much help as anyone alive. I’ve known Marcus Smallbone for more than thirty years. We first met at the university—we were both up together at Angelus. Our tastes were rather different, but we happened to live on the same staircase, and on one occasion”—the Reverend Eustace smiled reminiscently—“I saved him from being immersed in an ornamental fountain. Six against one seemed to me heavy odds so I weighed in and—er—lent him a hand. Dear me, yes. That was a long time ago. After we had both come down we still corresponded occasionally. When I had my first London living I looked him up, and we met once or twice for a meal.” He got to his feet, kicked a bull-terrier off the sofa and resumed. “The chief thing wrong with Marcus was a small settled income. Big enough to save him the trouble of earning his living, but not big enough to keep him busy looking after it. He had too much time. He used to spend a good deal of it over his collections. One year it was first editions, then it was Toby jugs. Lately, I believe, it’s been pottery. He never stayed in any one branch long enough to acquire any real knowledge of it. Well, that’s a harmless enough pursuit. But there was a worse side to it, I’m afraid—there’s nothing to be gained by not being absolutely frank—he had rather a small and uncomfortable mind. Possibly, again, this was due to having too much time on his hands. He loved writing to the papers, you know, to expose the errors of authors, or to call rather malicious attention to discrepancies in the statements of public men. These people were fair enough game, I suppose, but it didn’t stop there. I can only give you one example of this, because it’s the only one that came personally to my knowledge, but about two years ago a fellow parson of mine got into bad trouble with the bishop. He was lucky to keep his cloth. I won’t tell you the details—but the information on which the bishop acted came from Smallbone—”
Sergeant Plumptree nodded. He didn’t need to be told that this information was important. It opened, in fact, a startling vista. But there was a question which had to be asked and he found it difficult to frame it. The Reverend Evander saved him the trouble.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, “and you can put it right out of your mind. Smallbone was not a blackmailer. That wasn’t the way his mind worked at all. He’d ferret around unearthing these awkward and unsavoury facts, but he didn’t expose them for gain. I don’t know why he did it. It’s a question that won’t be answered now, this side of Judgment. Get off that sofa, Bungy, or I’ll brain you. Partly, as I said, it was not having enough to occupy himself with. It’s a terribly true tag about Satan and idle hands. Partly, I think, it was because that sort of business gratifies an overdeveloped sense of self-importance. Have another mug of cocoa, sergeant? That’s right. I can’t think why people should glorify beer at the expense of cocoa. It was that hearty vulgarian, Chesterton, who started it…”
IV
A thousand miles to the south.
Although it was only mid-March the sun of Central Italy already had power in it. Il Sergente Rosso, of the Carabinieri Reali, district of Florence, sub-station of Arrugia, sweated and grumbled as he wheeled his black-painted bicycle up the steep hill from the Arno Valley to the upland village of La Chioccola.
It was a Sunday and it was a fiesta: one of the many fiestas which bestar the Italian Catholic year. At lunch in the sub-station there had been consumed, besides the inevitable pasta schuta, lamb, a rare delicacy, and great square wedges of Monte Nero cheese. Wine had been drunk. Sergeant Rosso sweated.
Nevertheless, he persevered. There was a certain measure of pride in the perseverance. It was not every day that appeals for help came from England to the police of the sub-station of Arrugia. Prestige was involved. And beside and above all this, Sergeant Rosso was a friend of the English. Had he not fought, in the black days of 1944, as a member of the partigiani? Had he not shared in the triumphs of 1945? Had not the very bicycle which he was wheeling been stolen from the Royal Corps of Signals?
Sergeant Rosso sweated but persevered.
Presently he reached the iron gate and white walls of the Villa Carpeggio, and five minutes later he was in official converse with Signora Bonaventura. He produced for her inspection a photograph and a card. Signora Bonaventura laughed over the one and clucked over the other. Certainly she recognised the photograph. It was Signor Smolbon, who stood apart from all other Englishmen in her memory, in that he was of a reasonable size. Not two metres high and one metre broad, like most Englishmen. But of reasonable stature: smaller, almost, than an Italian. But to say that he owned her house! She examined the card and clucked again. Certainly, he had stayed there for some weeks—two months, perhaps, in the previous summer. He had visited the galleries of Florence, and had purchased a number of earthenware cooking utensils of doubtful value. She had not seen him since, nor heard of him. What was it that brought the sergeant on his mission? So! Signor Smolbon was dead. Santa Maria! All must come to it.
A thousand miles to the north.
Sergeant Plumptree called on the secretary to the Bishop of London. He referred briefly to the circumstances outlined to him by the Reverend Eustace Evander. The secretary was able to reassure him. The clergyman concerned in the incident was now on missionary work in China; he had been out of England for more than a year. Sergeant Plumptree thanked the secretary. It had not seemed to him a very hopeful line, but all lines had to be hunted out.
Meanwhile, Sergeant Plumptree’s colleague, Sergeant Elvers, had visited Charing Cross and spent a tiresome hour in the stationmaster’s office. All the booking-office clerks who had been on duty on the morning of Friday, February 12th, inspected a photograph of Marcus Smallbone and they all said that he looked very like a lot of people they had seen but they certainly couldn’t swear that he had taken a ticket to anywhere in Kent on that particular morning. Sergeant Elvers thereupon departed to repeat the process at London Bridge, Waterloo and Victoria. One of his difficulties was that there was no station in Kent called Stanton or Stancomb.
At Maidstone, a member of the Kent Constabulary, equipped with a gazetteer, a large map, a county history and other useful books of reference, was compiling a list. Stancomb Peveril, Stancombe Basset, Stancombe Earls, Stancombe House, the Stancombe Arms, Stanton-le-Marsh, Stanton Heath, Staunton, Staunston-cum-Cliffe…
So the little wheels clicked and the spindles bobbed and curtsied, and the mesh was woven.
V
“The monetary position would seem, at first sight, to be fairly straightforward,” reported Mr. Hoffman that evening. “Under the Articles of Partnership the total net profits of the firm—and by that I mean, of all the allied firms—are to be divided into ten equal shares. Of these shares Abel Horniman took four, Mr. Birley three, and Mr. Craine three. The whole of Abel Horniman’s share has now passed to his son, who is, I understand, his sole executor and beneficiary.”